Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy

Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom, and Victor Narro, eds. Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy (Ithaca: ilr Press 2010)

Over the past two decades, no city has produced a more fruitful interchange among unions, workers' centres, and other worker advocacy projects than Los Angeles. This useful volume pulls together the first scholarly fruits of reflection on the rich variety of contemporary workers' movements based in California's sprawling metropolis. The eleven case studies included in this volume, the product of a two-year collaboration among academics and activists, point the way toward the workers' movement of the future, while simultaneously illuminating a number of the obstacles that movement will need to overcome.

The 19 contributors to this volume bring a diversity of experiences to bear. Almost half of them were doctoral candidates at the time they submitted their essays. Some of these young scholars have had careers in activism working in organizations whose campaigns they are now studying. Most of those were members of the Public Sociologists Working Group, affiliated with the ucla Sociology Department, where they have been influenced by the work of Ruth Milkman, who co-edited this volume and whose book, L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement (Russell Sage Foundation 2006) provides the scholarly foundation for a number of the studies undertaken here. An array of lawyers, worker center organizers, and urban planners round out the list of contributors to this volume, among whom Victor Narro, project director of the ucla Downtown Labor Center, stands out.

The volume is organized in three parts. Part I treats immigrant worker advocacy efforts undertaken within ethnic communities. Jong Bum Kwon examines the struggles of the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (kiwa) to improve the lot of market workers through agitation,...